James Delahunty
3 Nov 2010 18:16
Facebook has admitted to two U.S. congressmen that third-party applications have shared user data with other companies, and promised to fix the problem.
Republican Congressmsan Joe Barton and Democratic Congressman Edward Markey had written a letter to Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about reports that third-party applications were sharing user information with other companies. Facebook Vice President Marne Levine responded in a letter, released on Wednesday, and confirmed that some apps have violated the social networking site's policies by sharing user data.
"We have taken enforcement action against the applications in question, and steps to ensure the deletion of the Facebook user data that was improperly transferred," Levine wrote. The Wall Street Journal had previously reported that Farmville and other popular applications on Facebook were transmitting user IDs to outside parties, while Facebook has also revealed that a handful of applications intentionally shared information with a data broker.
"The third-party data broker in question has also agreed not to operate on Facebook Platform in the future," Levine wrote.
Congressman Barton, who is now in line to head the House Energy and Commerce Committee after the Republican party gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives, said that the panel would focus on Internet privacy policies.
"It's good that Facebook was in a hurry to respond to our concerns, but the fact remains that some third-party applications were knowingly transferring personal information in direct violation of Facebook's privacy promises to its users," said Barton.